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Kofi Annan was the ultimate incarnation of a true Statesman, always looking at the big picture. His perspective would stretch as far as possible into the future and with a remarkable skill for linking complex issues in very different fields. Although there are innumerous illustrations of this, I shall always remember his decisive role in the development and adoption of the Millenium Development Goals, without which it would have been impossible to reach the universal consensus on the Agenda for Sustainable Development and the associated SDGs a few years later. He was a true believer in multilateralism.

These and similar questions are frequently heard these days by the WMO Education and Training Office. The answers are simple, but they do require some explanation: “The WMO Global Campus is all around us, including all WMO Members that offer education and training services. You do not need to join in any official way. You will be a part of it whenever you use the resources it offers and make your own contributions to the initiative.”

The WMO Global Campus initiative has sparked action for increasing collaboration to support the capacity-development needs of Members. The two components of the WMO Regional Training Centre (RTC) Argentina – the University of Buenos Aires and the National Meteorological Service (SMN) – have taken a lead. How does a university and a National Meteorological Service collaborate at local, regional and global levels to stimulate a revolution in meteorology training?

The middle decades of the twenty-first century will be a critical time for the meteorology profession. The effects of climate change will be clear and progressing in most regions (Hawkins and Sutton, 2012). The likely concurrent increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (IPCC, 2012) will place meteorological forecasting in a critical societal position. There will be opportunities for meteorology to provide new and exciting benefits to society through continued improvements in the accuracy of weather forecasts (Bauer et al., 2015). The growth of an efficient renewable energy sector (Frei et al., 2013), for example, would require accurate forecasts for a range of timescales from days to seasons ahead.

A Love Poem in the Time of Climate Change Sonnet XVII by Craig Santos Perez

I don’t love you as if you were rare earth metals, diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that propagate war: I love you as one loves most vulnerable things, urgently, between the habitat and its loss. I love you as

In 2016, El Niño-driven weather patterns significantly contributed to causing an intensification of global food insecurity. An analysis of the 2016 El Niño event, which affected more than 60 million people worldwide, revealed that a major part of the exposed population was uninformed and unprepared for the pronounced climate anomalies.

Climate services are fundamental for enabling national and local decision-makers to maintain and boost resilience in view of the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events due to climate change. Better availability of, access to and use of climate services is indispensable for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Priorities for Action in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other international frameworks. Climate services are also vital for implementing effective climate mitigation and adaptation measures and for instigating societal transformation.

At a time when the impacts of weather and climate are still growing dramatically, it is important to look for strategies to strengthen the science and technology that have resulted in substantial improvements in the skill of weather predictions and services over the past four decades. It was not that long ago – when many baby-boomers were just entering the workforce – that...

This theme is particularly appropriate at a time when communities around the globe are struggling to attain the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, especially in terms of health, food, water security and poverty alleviation, as well as to increase their effectiveness in preventing and mitigating natural disasters, of which 90 per cent are directly related to weather, climate and water hazards ...